I Have A Hard And Difficult Job Before Me,
But Hope To Scrape Through It With Credit, If Not With Much Success.
It
is a very different country:
And they are not only very different, but
very difficult, people to manage. Socially, every one has been very
civil and kind, and I have had no lack of company or advisers - the
latter sometimes giving rather odd suggestions. Everyone is expecting
to hear daily of a great battle near Washington, and it may be that the
fate of one or other of the contending parties will be decided, for the
time, at least, before I leave. At present there is great hatred and
animosity, and every possible evil passion abroad. If it were not for
the actual loss of dollars I believe they would cut each other's
throats to all eternity: but the hope is that their rapacity may check
their ferocity. As to any high purpose about the war - it is moonshine.
It is a war for supremacy and to find out which brother shall rule the
house and run away with the dying old man's goods. [Footnote: The
following Resolution passed the United States House of Representatives,
February 11, 1861, by a nearly unanimous vote: -
"Resolved - That neither the Federal Government, nor the people
or Government of the non-slaveholding States, have a purpose or a
constitutional right to legislate upon or interfere with slavery in any
of the States of the Union.
"Resolved - That those persons in the North who do not subscribe
to the foregoing proposition, are too insignificant in numbers and
influence to excite the serious attention and alarm of any portion of
the people of the Republic; and that the increase of their numbers and
influence does not keep pace with the increase of the aggregate
population of the Union." ] I am spending to-day with Reynolds, and
dine to-night with Brydges. Reynolds has a good house, but he complains
of his high rent, as his house was taken in the piping times of 1858.
Now rents are down one-half, and he could get as good a house for
100l a year, whereas he pays 200l In 1857 it was - to use
a vile Yankee phrase, the literal meaning of which no one can explain,
but the illustrative meaning of which is inflation - "High Felluting" -
or, as the Yankees write it, "Hi Falutin" - now everything is sobered,
and in many places depressed: only one house now being built in all
this town of 40,000 inhabitants."
"MONTREAL,
"6 Sep. 1861.
"I spent Monday in Toronto and came on here on Monday night, reaching
here on Tuesday afternoon. Since then I have been busy here. I have had
a more satisfactory interview with the Finance Minister, and we go to
Quebec together on Tuesday, after which I meet the Government,
officially, and shall know before the end of next week whether they
will help us, or not. I think they will do something. The management of
this railway is an organized mess - I will not say, a sink of iniquity.
I shall, however, know all about it before I have done with it.
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